Did you find Dennis more--

Confident/Manipulative.

Insecure/wounded.

All of the above.

Guest

(Part 1 in a five-part series)

I’ve always had a thing for legs. When I was around fourteen, I distinctly

remember reading a copy of my dad’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and gawking at the smooth, tanned legs of the woman on the cover; her body brightened by her orange swimsuit, her feet curling together in the foreground of the picture on the sand of the beach where she sat. She looked at you with the coy, jaded look women are meant to have in these photos. I wondered, at that time, if I would ever be this close to a stunning female’s legs in real life and if she would ever look at me like so.

Let’s fast-forward five years.

My buddy Jason and I sat on the porch outside a house party in November, watching the partygoers exit. We were drinking scotch on ice and I was numerous sheets to the wind. Jason burped.

“I’m gonna flunk that test tomorrow,” he said.

I watched the legs of the girls wandering outside. A few of them stumbled on the doorstep like drunken high-schoolers (which was basically what we still were, as freshmen ages 18 to 19), some of them were helped out by their equally smashed, wonky boyfriends (or guys who wished they were their boyfriends), and others exited smoothly and without any help, thank you. Many wore those tight black silk pants that is a continuing fad among the hip middle class female set. But a surprising number wore skirts—short skirts—although it was a cold night.

A girl in a flannel Irish skirt walked out. Her legs were amazing. They got thick and curvy towards the top, but nice and lean as you went down to her feet. She wore black shoes that looked like particularly warm slippers. I wondered why she was dressed like this was the original Saint Patrick’s Day. She had red hair and freckles and was chatting with two other girls, didn’t seem too drunk.

“Look at the legs on that one,” Jason said.

Jason had no tact whatsoever. They probably heard him. But I was secretly surprised someone else cared about legs as much as I did.

“Yeah,” I responded. “They’re really something.”

In a moment of utter cockiness, I called to her.

“Ms. O’ Brien! What’s your name?”

She and her friends looked toward me, perplexed.

“Janis…” she said eventually. “Hi.”

I raised my beer.

“Great to make your acquaintance.”

“Yeah,” she said, sort of smiling. “Same.”

“You ladies get home safe,” I said.

I can sound like a dick if I want, like a smooth operator if I want, like a drunk teenager if I want, or like a cop, if I really want. Janis and her friends trotted off to a car at the far end of the driveway and I felt proud of sounding like all four to her. I knew at that point that somehow, some way, I would bang Janis before the year was up.

During most of the fall semester I was pretty diligent about going to classes and studying, I was kind of serious about not smoking as much pot as I had in high school and not getting arrested for it as I had once. But gradually that all went out the window because the school I go to (I'm not going to name it. It's somewhere in the Midwest), is one of the hardest partying institutions in the country. By the end of October I was crashing my bike in to the side of the student lounge because I was drunk and getting written up by the campus cops for playing beer pong outside, in the parking lot, with four other people. I was/am ridiculous.

One of the people I played beer pong with that night was none other than Janis. We first hooked up that October night. I felt her boobs and made out with her against the brick wall of Dodson Hall. She had been a Catholic school girl; that explained the uniform.

At one point she pulled away and said, “I like you…”

“You’re not too bad yourself,” I said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again, but you’re not too bad.”

I’d given this line many times before. The first time had been perhaps three years before in high school, around the time I’d trained myself to stop fearing girls. Janis looked vaguely disappointed after she heard it. Her freckles gleamed out of the darkness in the corner of the building we were scrunched up against and made her look lonely. I kissed her again and said goodnight and left.

The next time we met was in December. I saw her in the student lounge after our Economics class and we ended up sitting and eating lunch together. We shot the shit for a while, and then she asked if I wanted to take a walk with her. I was like, "Sure." We walked around in the cold over to her dorm and I led her to her door. As soon as we got to her door, she pulled me in and we kissed again.

Next thing you know, I'm on the top of her bunk bed, naked except for my boxers and she's naked except for the insane tan lines on her skin left by her bra and panties, even in winter. I'm doing a rotating pattern of sucking on the nipples of her tits while she runs her fingers through my hair like I'm a fucking pet dog. She whispers to me to go down on her.

Guest

(Cont'd) This was something I’d never done. I had an idea of how to; I’d watched pornos. I just thought it was kind of gross. But Janis asked me to and she sounded so fucking sexy saying it I almost came on her leg. I looked upside down between her tits at the ridge of brown pubic hair that my tongue had been commissioned to climb and claim. I let my tongue droop out while I moved down her belly-- I noticed she had a little bit of pudge coming in-- and started licking her steep, odorous vagina. I knew that you were supposed to get right in there and also finger her. So I slipped a couple of fingers in after tongue-soloing it for a few minutes.

She was mostly shaved aside from the tuft of hair that tangled up on my tongue whenever I licked it over. I felt several stray pubes on the inside of my tongue, so I switched to using only the tip of my tongue, veering from left to right over her shaved prickles and the bulging pink mass swelling under her folds. She grabbed the nape of my neck and began pulling my hair. She squirmed her legs around and every time her thighs brushed against my cheeks and my ears I got a little more of a boner. Janis started making these sounds you’re supposed to make in church. If I spelled it out, it would look like any other female pleasure sound. Let's say it sounded like she'd just realized that Jesus himself was magically eating her pussy. I kept fingering/licking her and her thighs jerked upward inch by inch, rotating her vagina further in to my mouth. Her pubes tickled my nose and mouth. At one point her lower body tilted upward enough so that her clit sponged over my nose and my nose bumped in to my fingers, which were circling around inside of her. She caught her breath and kept on with her tenor yelps. I suddenly realized; "This is great. I love eating pussy. The End."

I felt my phone buzz. (My leg was on it). I drew my face away and a string of gooey wetness pulled away with me. I saw then that I was looking at this pink, monstrous, excited wilderness, inside of which my fingers were helplessly closed. I kept swirling my fingers around and looked at the text message. It was my friend asking if we were meeting in McDougal's at noon. Shit, I was supposed to meet James at McDougals, where he works. (McDougals is a place where they don’t give a shit how old you are if you know someone who works there. I got completely loaded there time and time again.) I propped my hand against her inner thigh and Janis did not even try to move away. I quickly punched in, Nope, can't do it. I paused, thiking, and punched in; I'm eating pussy. I set my phone down and saw that Janis was staring down at me with the same expression as when she gets a question wrong in class, except redder.

She said "Dennis...get off your phone. Stay with me."

I just looked at her for a second and then dove back in to her muff. She was very slick against my tongue; it felt like my tongue would slip on her vagina and break something. Whatever the fluids are that make a girl's vagina wet were getting in my nose by now. She slid both hands over my shoulders. She hyperventilated. Now she was more determined to make me happy. I appreciated her tenacity. I pulled back a second time just to see what her pussy now looked like. It was open enough, her folds exposed and wet enough, for my tongue to touch no skin at all. I rubbed my fingers up and down her clit vertically and as soon as they were back down at the bottom, I swiped my tongue back on to her. She shut her legs around my head. Everything that entered my ear-drums—her hyperventilating, her church-noises, the rustling of sheets, the hum of the air in her room, the smacking of my tongue against clitoral excitement, the buzz of my phone as James responded—was sucked away and all I felt was smooth, dense skin. Her thighs. Clamped around my head.

(Were these magazine cover legs? Was I close enough?)

She released her clamp of destiny. I heard everything again.
Janis moaned very loudly three times and did the most perfect goddam thing ever-- she fumbled a hand on to my forehead and cocked my head back so I could look at her face while her thighs bounced off my shoulders. She held my head like that for just a few seconds-- long enough for me to get one of my brilliant, deranged ideas. I grabbed my iPhone from beside her leg, raised it so my arm bent around her leg, pressed the camera app and snapped a picture of her. Her head was cocked back, her mouth formed a jagged O, her tits jangled on either corner--they were bouncy, future soccer mom tits-- and her very Irish dimples had a staring contest with me, as if to say, 'Are ye having as blarney of a time as Janis, bogle??' That was what the picture looked like.

I let the phone fall on her sheets. I reached up and touched Janis' cheek with one hand, as if to say I was also a strong, sentimental lover. She let me hold the side of her face for a few seconds. Then she smacked my hand away and completely changed tempo.

"Take your fucking phone away from me, fuck you, Oh My God, I thought I could trust you, Oh my God, what is wrong with me..." She hit me with her pillow. For a while I thought it was a game she was playing and was really saying she wanted to fuck me, but when she threw my phone across the room I got the actual drift. I grabbed my phone and told her, okay, I guess I misread your signals, wow, way to tell a dude you hate him. She yelled at me fuck you again as I opened her door and bolted out.

For a while, I worried that my phone was broken, but guess what?? It isn't! I still have those pictures of Janis or rather Janis' tits, nape and chin. I’ve sent it to all my best buds. I sort of wish I had the cell number of everybody who’s ever hooked up with Janis so I could send it to them. I look at the photo and think it's kind of masterful, sort of like something Robert Mapplethorpe would have done if he were straight and ate pussy. It looks exactly like the type of photo you would find in Playboy or something more hardcore. Or even certain Victoria's Secret ads. Or maybe even a really pornographic version of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Which prompted me to search around the house for that original swimsuit edition magazine. I wanted to relive the feeling of being fourteen and not knowing what this mysterious thing was in front of me, and having not experienced it myself, so directly. But I got tired and couldn’t find it. So I’m stuck with this story, and with the photograph, and there’s no going back in time.